With “The
Limits of Control” Aquarius Jim Jarmusch made a film, which reflects
Uranus in Pisces. Merging familiar elements and narrative structures of film
noir with unusual perspectives, lots of references and allusions and mystifying,
spiritual truisms, he gives the contents of collective cultural imagery a
new look and encourages us to toy around with it. The result is a cinematic
kaleidoscope, which – watched with patience and an open mind – can
provide some kind of initiation to our own imagination.

The movie starts literally with a reversal of familiar perspectives: In
an overhead shot we see a head at the bottom of the frame. Arms and hands
fill the rest of the screen with slow Qi Gong moves and only as the elegantly
clad man starts leaving the frame, the next scene shows him stepping out
of a narrow cubicle in an airport restroom.

It seems we have watched him prepare for an important encounter since
in the next scene he’s meeting a Spanish speaking man, who – with
the help of a translator and despite some not really obstructive linguistic
confusion – appears to assign him a mission we cannot determine more
precisely. Thereby phrases like “Use your imagination” and “Remember:
reality is arbitrary” are used. Finally the two men, who obviously
don’t communicate primarily by language, part after a downright brotherly
embrace.

Following the taciturn agent on his journey through Spain now, we watch
his further sometimes surreal, sometimes only mysterious encounters with
different characters, who incorporate ideas rather than individual persons.
Time after time the nameless “lone man” is sitting in cafés,
ordering two espresso in two cups (a detail, he feels strongly about),
talking very little and exchanging matchboxes filled with codes or diamonds
with his contacts, while these elaborate on music, movies, molecules, art
or hallucinogens and reflections. These characters all can be read as incorporating
Pisces- or Uranus-in-Pisces-energy.

Balance
to this emphasis on Pisces initially comes only from the protagonist’s
stoic, precise and minimalist actions. He’s following austere principles
and his whole appearance is exuding “Saturn”, while his obvious
inclination towards dutiful asceticism and detailed rituals even suggests
the current Virgo-Saturn (which is repeatedly moving in opposition to Uranus
in Pisces since November 2008). This Virgo-Saturn character now has to follow
an assignment that forces him to deal with Pisces-motifs – in the course
of the movie we can observe, how this confrontations gradually cause subtle
changes.

But there are other analogies for Saturn (respectively Capricorn) too: from
the cafés the man watches black helicopters, which seem to execute
some unknown surveillance task; the landscapes he travels through become
increasingly barren and rocky, his accommodations more meager…

It is especially the cinematic means though, that are lending the Neptunian
contents a Saturnine form: narrative reduction and minimalism in drama as
well as in the performance mirror Saturn-quality, just as the constant, ritualized
repetition of phrases, situations, images shows a Virgo-tone. Around this
Saturnine framework slowly a story grows from the collective pool of images,
along the supporting banister a plot advances, which, to become recognizable,
demands from us a significant amount of imagination. And herein lies the
pleasure, this movie offers: it resembles an attentively guided dive to the
enigmatic and poetic beauties of our collective creativity – whose
endangerment by close observation and reasonable utilization, but also by
irrelevance and arbitrariness isn’t left unnoticed.

Maybe we also might find out, that “the limits of control” applying
to our imagination, are defined from the outside as well as from the inside,
they are in the boundless floods of human creativity, but also in the attentive
and disciplined dealing with creative forces – this is demonstrated
by “The Limits of Control” in a fascinating way.

Vesna Ivkovic

Vesna Ivkovic studied literature and linguistics, sociology, philosophy and
history and as well took a profound interest in psychology, mythology and
different belief systems. Along the way she also explored various paths of
body awareness such as the martial arts of Kung Fu, Dance, Yoga, Qi Gong and
several other methods of body work and motion arts. In 1993 she discovered
astrology as an instrument of knowledge and graduated in 2004 in Markus
Jehle's and Petra Niehaus' master class at the Astrology Center Berlin.
You can find out more about the author and her work on her own website www.astrosemiotics.de

The Cinemascope is meant to give an overview of current movies and their main themes from an astrosemiotical perspective (i.e.: regarding film as semiotic system and translating it into the astrological semiotic system). A well made movie not only has a story and a certain theme, it also provides a special atmosphere, a certain feeling and it draws us into its very own world. This basic quality that is contrived through characters, plot, setting and many other components also translates into one or more astrological principles. Quite simply: a fast-paced action-flick confronts us with plain Aries energy, a horror-movie evokes Scorpio-like abysmal depths and fears etc. We step out of the theatre and – if the film succeeded in sucking us in – find ourselves dwelling on and engaging in that special energetic quality.

AstroWiki
by Astrodienst is a free encyclopedia of astrology. It collects the knowledge
of the astrological community and makes it available to everybody. The Wiki`s
cadre consists of two astrological lexica.

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